Ann Ward was a publisher based in York in the eighteenth century. She was the wife of the printer Caesar Ward, the owner of the York Courant newspaper, and took over her husband’s firm after his death in 1759. Ward continued to print the newspaper and manage a book shop in the centre of York until her death in 1789. One of the most notable books published by Ward was the first edition of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in 1760.
Ward also had a steady income from printing books on York. This three-volume history of the city was published in 1785. She would condense the work into a 32-page guidebook two years later. That book was the first guide to York to be aimed towards the increasing market for domestic tourism at the end of the eighteenth century.